OLD-TIME ORATORY 191 
to drink it, and that is this, that he is personally one of the 
most genial and kindly-hearted of men. At a time when his 
country was in great difficulty, and when many Americans 
thought at least they had something to complain of in the tone 
of English society [the Duke was a Scotsman], I was in the 
constant habit of meeting Mr. Field, and I never saw his tem- 
per ruffled for a moment, I never heard any words fall from 
him but words of peace between the two countries . . . and 
I have reason to believe that his services and exertions in the 
United States have not a little contributed to secure the re- 
turn of that feeling.” 
Several prominent members of the British Government 
were present, among them Sir John Pakington, Sir Stafford 
Northcote, and Alexander Milne. The Right Honorable Sir 
John Pakington said in part: “I am one of the few—and they 
are quickly becoming fewer—who made a tour in the United 
States not only before electric telegraphs were thought of, but 
before even steamboats had crossed the Atlantic. . . . It so 
happened that the wind was in the west, as it generally is, and 
I was exactly six weeks from shore to shore. . . . The com- 
munication, which at the time to which I first referred occu- 
pied six weeks, may now be effected in as many minutes. . . . 
Even during the dinner we have been corresponding briskly 
with our American friends.” 
Cobden’s old associate in the fight to import grain freely 
into England, John Bright, spoke feelingly and at great 
length. He said in part: ‘““During the years which passed be- 
tween 1790 and 1815, for nearly twenty-five years the gov- 
ernment and people of this country were waging a war of a 
terrific character with a neighboring state. The result of that 
war was that which is, I believe, the result of every great war 
—enormous expenditure, great loans, heavy taxation, grow- 
ing debt, and, of course, much suffering among the people, 
who have to bear the burden of those burdens. But after 
that war, during twenty-five years, from 1815 to 1841, there 
